Loss

I went to Kathleen's to read a play with her roommates who are graduated theater majors who still want to feel like they're involved with theater. We read The Heidi Chronicles. I thought it would be about a girl who picked daisies in the Alps with a bearded woodsman, but its actually about the vacuous life of a woman who constantly worked for women's liberation. There was an absolutely heart-breaking scene where she plans to leave New York City, so she goes to say good-bye to her gay friend Peter. He talks about how he keeps going to funerals for friends who are dying of AIDS, how his world continues becoming smaller and smaller, how his family can only be his friends, and now she's leaving him too.

I feel that way sometimes—not that my friends are dying, but like Peter, my friends can be my only touchstone. And one day they will all inevitably divide themselves two-to-a-box, before they begin multiplying again—and I will remain outside of that always. So I feel nostalgic for a youth I constantly have to remind myself that I still possess, and I can't help but see everything macrocosmically when a friend, say, forgets to return my call.

Then I went to a party, and I saw this well-dressed boy making elaborate hand gestures. I immediately assumed he was gay, but then I heard him talk, and he was British! I stood there just aurally oggling the way he spoke. Then someone told me he was British and gay. I was thrilled, but later rebuffed conversations made it pretty clear he didn't want to talk to me. So I return home sullen, lingering over the sound of his voice.